to marry you, though I wouldn’t have been averse to living
with you for a whilesay a month or so. And above all, the
masquerade struck me as ridiculous.
“But the facts kept staring me in the face. I was going to
do all those things. There were no alternatives, no fanciful
‘branches of time,’ no decision-points that might be altered
to make the future change. My future, like yours, Dr. Wald’s,
and everyone else’s, was fixed. It didn’t matter a snap
whether or not I had a decent motive for what I was going
to do; I was going to do it anyhow. Cause and effect, as I
could see for myself, just don’t exist. One event follows an-
other because events are just as indestructible in space-time
as matter and energy are.
“It was the bitterest of all pills. It will take me many
years to swallow it completely, and you too. Dr. Wald will
come around a little sooner, I think. At any rate, once I was
intellectually convinced that all this was so, I had to protect
my own sanity. I knew that I couldn’t alter what I was going
to do, but the least I could do to protect myself was to supply
myself with motives. Or, in other words, just plain rationali-
zations. That much, it seems, we’re free to do; the conscious-
ness of the observer is just along for the ride through time,
and can’t alter eventsbut it can comment, explain, invent.
That’s fortunate, for none of us could stand going through
motions which were truly free of what we think of as
personal significances.
“So I supplied myself with the obvious motives. Since I
was going to be married to you and couldn’t get out of it, I